ransported themselves into Mauritania. The distant province
was astonished with the fury of these barbarians, who seemed to fall
from a new world, as their name, manners, and complexion, were equally
unknown on the coast of Africa.

II. In that part of Upper Saxony, beyond the Elbe, which is at present
called the Marquisate of Lusace, there existed, in ancient times, a
sacred wood, the awful seat of the superstition of the Suevi. None were
permitted to enter the holy precincts, without confessing, by their
servile bonds and suppliant posture, the immediate presence of the
sovereign Deity. Patriotism contributed, as well as devotion, to
consecrate the Sonnenwald, or wood of the Semnones. It was universally
believed, that the nation had received its first existence on that
sacred spot. At stated periods, the numerous tribes who gloried in the
Suevic blood, resorted thither by their ambassadors; and the memory
of their common extraction was perpetrated by barbaric rites and
human sacrifices. The wide-extended name of Suevi filled the interior
countries of Germany, from the banks of the Oder to those of the Danube.
They were distinguished from the other Germans by their peculiar mode
of dressing their long hair, which they gathered into a rude knot on the
crown of the head; and they delighted in an ornament that showed their
ranks more lofty and terrible in the eyes of the enemy. Jealous as the
Germans were of military renown, they all confessed the superior valor
of the Suevi; and the tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri, who, with a
vast army, encountered the dictator Caesar, declared that they esteemed
it not a disgrace to have fled before a people to whose arms the
immortal gods themselves were unequal.

In the reign of the emperor Caracalla, an innumerable swarm of Suevi
appeared on the banks of the Mein, and in the neighborhood of the Roman
provinces, in quest either of food, of plunder, or of glory. The hasty
army of volunteers gradually coalesced into a great and permanent
nation, and as it was composed from so many different tribes, assumed
the name of Alemanni, * or Allmen; to denote at once their various
lineage and their common bravery. The latter was soon felt by the Romans
in many a hostile inroad. The Alemanni fought chiefly on horseback; but
their cavalry was rendered still more formidable by a mixture of light
infantry, selected from the bravest and most active of the youth, whom
frequent exercise had inure